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ENIKŐ SEPSI
logos. And this logos is, first of all, a verb (verbum, the Word), with the character
of a verb (in contrast to the horizontality of adjectives — as we could continue
in the voice of the well-known Hungarian poet, Janos Pilinszky). The persona,
the mask worn and displayed by us, the personality, the no-one [“personne’], is
an empty point that at its center speaks and denies. (233) In exhalation, it tran¬
substantiates: the spiritual is not immaterial but the metamorphosis of matter,
its exhalation/expiration. Man, created by speech in the image of the Creator,
becomes active through speech. In place of Artaud’s hieroglyphics, Novarina’s
theater interrogates the image of man (which in its essence is speech), his
anthropoglyphs, in vivo. The text erupts through the actor’s body with his
respir(it)ation: it is the common Passion of actor and text. True mimesis is
the activation of existence, the setting of existence into motion. As an imitatio
Christi, the actor de-portrays [“dé-représente”] and destroys the human idol.
The Word crucified on the cross of space hurls human words into space, the
body given over to this passive act. Through prayer, which is respir(it)ation, life
is given back, since respiration evokes what is missing (Christ’s other name is
the gouged out, the one who is empty, like us, who are personae)."*
This is the Pascalian (Paschal) act. Novarina follows Pascal’s thoughts in his
use of numbered fragments which stand in the latently influential stream of
the French essay: they engage in dialogue with Jules Lagneau, Alain, Simone
Weil, and Claudel (even though their names do not crop up, and the inter¬
textuality may not always be conscious). According to Alain, ritual provides
rules and objects to the attention, which is why it might be the origin of art.“
His student, Simone Weil, extends the train of thought with her concept of
artistic de-creation [décréation]. The characteristic of the de-created state is
the in-active activity whose origin is found in the Bhagavad-Gita. Related
concepts include desire without an object, and undirected attention. In truth,
it is the tense compromise between metaphysical stillness and the movement
necessary for any physical action. Human autonomy, evil, and mortality are
crucified on the cross of space and time. By means of grace, the “T”, assuming
itself to be autonomous (this autonomy is the ego’s greatest illusion), is gradu¬
ally erased by its own volition: this process is the opposite of creation, namely,
de-creation (taking one back to the uncreated state, in contrast to destruction,
which leads into the void). Reminiscences of János Pilinszky might arise in
Novarina participated in the new French translation of the Bible with other poets (Jacques
Roubaud, Olivier Cadiot), dramatists (e.g., Francois Bon), and novelists (Jean Echenoz, Em¬
manuel Carrère, Jean-Luc Benoziglio).
Continuing in the vein of Simone Weil’s thinking, imagination seeks to fill the rupture oc¬
curring at this point — which could also be filled transcendentally — with illusions.
Alain: Du cérémonial, in Systéme des beaux-arts, Paris, Gallimard, 1926, 40-41. (For more
detail on the subject, see my study: A propos d’Alain, in Revue d’Etudes frangaises, No. 10,
2005, 95-105.)
Simone Weil: Décréation, in La pesanteur et la gräce, Paris, Plon, 1988 [1947], 42.
* 90 ¢